


Back to School

by Miss_Six



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, loud children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Six/pseuds/Miss_Six
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fill: "Raleigh and Mako with kids".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to School

**Author's Note:**

> Just some fluff for [verysharpteeth](http://verysharpteeth.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.

Raleigh looked at the list in front of him. Pencils, markers, composition book…this should be easy, right?

“Okay, Stack,” he said to the serious little boy beside him, “Let’s start in this aisle, and we’ll just work our way through to the back, and pick things up as we go.”

His son stared up at him with giant brown eyes. “I need a pencil box.”

“I know, Stack, but I don’t see those here - what about this?” He pulled a zippered bag off one of the racks. “It’s blue, that’s your favorite color, right?”

“No, dad, it needs to be a  _box_.” He pointed with a tiny finger at the entry on the list that said, in small font, “BOXES ONLY, NO BAGS”.

Raleigh sighed and put the bag back on the rack, just as a tiny blur whirled up to him and clutched at his pants. “DADDYIWANNAHELLOKITTYPENCILBUTMOMMASAIDIT’SNOTONTHELIST”  _gasp_ “PLEEEEEASE?”

Mako walked up behind the mini human tornado, still composed, but with the tiniest hint of frustration in her eyes. “Tamsin,” she said patiently, “It isn’t a pencil, it is a pen, and the kindergarten list says ‘no ballpoint pens’.”

“You heard your mother, Tam. Look, Stacker, it says you need folders and those are right here. Go pick out-” he consulted The List again “-a red one, a blue one, a green one, two yellow ones and a purple one.” Stacker obediently made for the folders and started his hunt.

“BUT I LOVE IT, DADDY!” Tamsin wasn’t ready to give up on her dreams just yet.

Raleigh got down on one knee to look her in the eye. “Tamsin, who don’t you see if you can find some Hello Kitty pencils instead? You can get those instead.”

“THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!” Tamsin was small for her age, but she more than made up for it in pure volume. Raleigh was pretty sure she only had two settings, “loud” and “louder”. He was also pretty sure this was what his mother had been referring to when she’d told him she hoped he had kids that were just like him.

He glanced at Mako. “Holding up okay?”

His wife smiled warmly at him. “I’m glad you are here. I never had to shop for school like this when I was a little girl. My village was small, it was very different.” Back to school shopping had been Raleigh’s domain for the last couple of years, but with their youngest daughter starting kindergarten, Mako had wanted to come “to help out, you only have two hands, and they will both be full of Tamsin.”

Before they were married, Raleigh had told her he would settle down anywhere with her, even her old home in Japan if she wanted, but Mako only shook her head.  _That does not feel like home anymore_ , she’d said.  _You are my home_. So they moved to Anchorage; he’d sworn he would never go back after his mother died, but once they’d decided to have kids, his happy childhood memories had become nostalgic in a way he’d never felt before. It suddenly seemed like a great place to live.

“Yeah, we like to make a big ordeal out of everything,” Raleigh said, looking around at the giant signs and decorations festooned with pictures of pencils and backpacks.

“I think it is fun,” Mako confessed, “except I don’t understand why the supply lists have to be so specific.”

As if on cue, Stacker pulled on Mako’s hand. “Mom,” he said urgently, “they don’t have yellow folders.”

Mako’s eyes went fretful again, and Raleigh grabbed her other hand. “Hey,” he said. “I got this.”

He followed his son over to the shelves. If Tamsin was just like him, Stacker was very much his mother’s son - quiet, methodical. More than once Raleigh had walked in on him constructing painstakingly engineered structures with his toy blocks. For his birthday, he’d asked for graph paper, and had spent hours drawing up elaborate plans for an amusement park. “See, dad?” he said, pointing at the boxes of folders. “No yellow.”

Raleigh scanned the shelves. “I see some, buddy. They’re just up where you can’t reach them.” Grabbing two, they made their way back to where Mako was holding two backpacks and Tamsin had two more.

“I just can’t decide!” their daughter wailed. “I love all of them so much!”

Before Raleigh could intervene, Mako soothed her with a firm but tranquil voice. “Tamsin, we will get the plain purple one. We can take it home and decorate it with all your pins and patches that Uncle Newt sends you, and then no one else will have one like it!”

Happily Tamsin skipped off to return the rejected bags, and Raleigh put an arm around his wife’s waist from behind. “See? You’re a pro at this already.”

Mako leaned her head back against his chest. “We have such a comfortable life, and then sometimes it feels so strange to realize that we’re raising children together.”

He bowed his head to press his lips against her hair. “We met piloting a giant robot to kill monsters from another dimension, and the fact that we have kids is what’s strange?”

She laughed. “You know what I mean!”

“I do know what you mean.”  _I never really thought about the future_ , he’d said to her in what he thought would be his last hours. Realizing that he was living in his future - well, that was something he was still getting used to. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“Let’s get through the rest of this shopping, and see if you still think that,” she teased, smiling as she took Stacker to collect his sister.

“It’s tied with marrying you in the first place,” he called after her, and pushed the cart along after them. “Best decision I ever made.”


End file.
